Back in the days when music impresario and wine buff Michael Dorf was running the Knitting Factory, his famed downtown performance spot, he took pride in crafting a superb wine list for his customers. “But it was so frustrating,” says Dorf. “I’d buy all this terrific wine, and nobody wanted it. They’d end up drinking beer. The only wine they wanted was glop.”

This week, Dorf gets his revenge. Tomorrow, a specially refrigerated truck completed a cross-country trip from California wine country by unloading 10 tons of wine grapes at a 19th-century, red-brick building on Varick Street. Once the offices of the newspaper El Diario, the building is being turned into 21,000-square-foot City Winery, Dorf’s pioneering effort to create a serious urban winemaking facility smack in the heart of SoHo.

For around $7,000 and up, depending on the price of grapes and membership level chosen, 200 New Yorkers will have the opportunity to create a personal barrel of wine, equal to 250 bottles, under the direction of French-born winemaker David Lecomte. And not just any old wine. City Winery has lined up grapes from some of the country’s most prestigious vineyards. Just how prestigious you want to go is up to you – or your wallet. Basic membership is $5,000 plus barrel and labeling costs, and grapes run between $1,380 and $3,280. (Actually, that works out to $25-$40 per bottle – less than the price of many commercial bottlings from these same vineyards.)

Tomorrow’s first load of grapes, however, consists only of a modest zinfandel from Lodi in California’s Central Valley. It’s being used for a test run of the spanking new winery equipment, including crusher, destemmer and a march of giant, stainless steel fermentation tanks, all connected by a maze of pumps, hoses, and filters. In the cellar, more than 200 French new (up to $1,600 each) and used oak barrels, are stacked, ready to add their element of complexity to the wine as it ages for up to a year.

In coming weeks, grapes will begin arriving from some of California’s most venerated vineyards, including pinot noir and petit syrah from Bacigalupi vinyard in Sonoma County’s Russian River Valley, cabernet sauvignon from Napa Valley’s Bettinelli vineyard, and another batch of cabernet from a source so famous among wine geeks that its owner insists it remain unnamed, at least for City Winery’s inaugural vintage. It’s listed simply as “Special Vineyard.” Dorf’s arm doesn’t need much twisting before he admits that Special Vineyard is actually Napa Valley’s Beckstoffer Vineyard, planted almost a century ago by the legendary Georges de la Tour, and the source of dense, ageworthy “cab” abounding in cassis, blackberry and licorice flavors.

“I figured if we were going to go to the trouble of making wine in Manhattan,” says Dorf, “then we were going to do it right.”

Not partial to California wines? City Winery also offers pinot noir from Olsen Vineyards in Oregon’s Willamette Valley and, much closer to home, a Bordeaux-like merlot from Jamesport Vineyard on Long Island’s North Fork. There’s even a delicate riesling from Norbud Farm/Uva Blanca Vineyards in the Finger Lake region, our region’s prime source for this delicate, food-friendly white wine.

Once you’ve chosen your grapes, you’ll be able to fine-tune your style of wine under the guidance of Lecomte, a graduate of the wine school at Montpelier, France. And yes, you can put your own name on the label in type as large as you like.

To insure that fruit arrives at the winery in pristine condition, even after a cross-country trek, it’s packed into small containers in the cool of the night. Then it’s rushed to a refrigerated warehouse for futher cooling to 34 degrees before being loaded into a truck where the grapes will be sealed under a layer of inert gas and maintained at a temperature in the mid-30’s to prevent premature fermentation. A pair of temperature monitoring devices will be on board during the trip eastward – “one belongs to the trucking company,” Lecomte says, “and one belongs to me.”

There’s one portion of City Winery’s basement where neither Dorf nor Lacompte will have total control. That’s where 30 barrels of kosher wine will be made each vintage. According to Jewish custom, kosher wine can be touched only by religiously observant Jews. Although Dorf is Jewish, he is doesn’t qualify as observant. And although Lecomte is a former winemaker at the kosher Herzog Winery in California, he’s not Jewish. But City Winery’s kosher cache will not only be for Jews. “Our building is owned by Trinity Church,” explains Dorf, who lives with his wife and three children in Tribeca, only a ten minute stroll from his landlord. “I promised the church a share of sacramental wine for their rituals.”

All winemaking and no play would make Dorf a dull fellow, so when City Winery has its “soft” opening in November, it will include two wine bars (one offering wine and cheese combos in partnership with Murray’s Cheese), a restaurant, and performance stage. Dorf is planning a weekly “pairings” concert series, at which guests can sip a fine wine or even a glass of calvados during the concert. Pairings kicks off with Steve Earl on Jan. 8. Philip Glass will weigh in with a four-concert series in March.

Special dinners can be hosted in a glass-walled, climate-controlled barrel room on the main floor, in the winery itself (don’t trip over those hoses!), or down in the barrel cave, where the scent of French oak and young wine can be inhaled. There will also be storage for 20,000 bottles of wine – the best from around the world, as well as City Winery’s own, to bolster the wine list. “The food will be there to support the wine, and not the other way around,” Dorf says. And this time around, not a single bottle will be glop.